“We just wanted to catch up,” I said lamely.
“Catch up,” she repeated dryly. “I suppose you could call it that.”
I bit my lip. “Mrs. Lyons, it’s really not like that?—”
“Oh, Iknowit’s not like that.” Her tone was honey-sweet as she nodded at another party guest with a close-mouthed smile. “And I’m very glad to hear thatyouknow that, dear, considering we just paid a fortune for you to serve this family faithfully. Daniel also needs to serve this family too, and he will need somereminding. I very much hope you’re up for the job, because he hardly listens to me.”
She took a sip of her champagne. The deep pink of her lipstick didn’t smudge on the glass. Nothing about her face moved at all, even when she smiled again. “I suppose you’re meeting him at the tennis courts. Or the rose garden? Perhaps the conservatory?”
Stunned, I opened and then closed my mouth quickly.
“You’ll go,” she ordered calmly. “Makeourexpectations clear, and then you can enjoy the party, since it will be your last night out for some time.”
“I…” I searched the crowd for Daniel, Joni, or any familiar face that could serve as a port in this little squall.
“Do we have an understanding, my dear?”
Shock and something like shame prickled up and down my body even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. Why was she treating me like I had? Daniel had invited me here tonight. He had been happy to see me, had danced with me in front of everyone, even kissed me on the cheek in front of his own mother.
He wouldn’t have done all of that if there was something inappropriate about us, even if I did technically work for his family.
A little workplace romance wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
Was it?
“You can go now.” She nodded in the direction of the rose gardens and the looming glasshouse that shadowed half the fading summer blooms. “He’ll be there shortly.”
I almost didn’t go.
I passed the stairs leading to my rooms above the garage and nearly turned up them, where a long bath, flannel pajamas, and my favorite lavender tea were calling to alleviate the fogginess in my head and the uncertainty weighing there. I could put this strange, confusing night behind me—both its magic and its warnings—and go back to being the person I already knew how to be. Marie, the cook. Marie, the wallflower. Marie, the girl who had never experienced anything outside her careful, familiar, and very small world.
The problem was, even with Mrs. Lyons’s and Ondine’s not-so-subtle warnings, I still didn’t want to bethatMarie.
I hadn’t been her for months.
Daniel’s kiss remained an imprint on my cheek, burning to continue whatever journey had started the moment I stepped onto the plane for France a year ago.
In Paris, I had discovered another Marie who had been hidden deep inside me. The Marie who desperately wanted to come into her own. Marie, the dreamer.
She deserved more than one dance, one night. She deserved to see this night through.
The conservatory was warm when I opened its doors, damp humidity welcoming me in a sweet, floral embrace. While it was warm outside, the wind off the Sound and the night air had chased away the heavy brace of August in New York. In here, however, I was in a jungle.
I wandered around the greenhouse, marveling at the colors lit by the well-placed lights beneath the trees and flowers. Above, starlight twinkled through the glass.
The botanical conservatory at Prideview was famous. Ondine and I had cooked dinners for actual heads of state who traveled to Westchester just to view the ghost orchid Carlos had coaxed into one eerie bloom a few years earlier. It was still growing in the far corner, labeled and separate from the other plants. The blooms were long gone, leaving only a few green stems and the tangled mass of roots folded into a pot.
I bent down to look at it.
“What makes you so special?” I wondered. “Is it just because you only come out to bloom once every ten years? Or is there something deep down?”
The orchid—or what was left of it, anyway—didn’t reply, of course.
“Maybe that’s how it will be for me,” I told it. “Maybe I’m a once-a-decade kind of flower too.” The thought was sobering. “Well, if tonight’s my one night, then why not live it up? Tomorrow I can go back to being what everyone else expects and wait another ten years to bloom again.”
“That would be a shame.”
I jumped with a shriek, nearly knocking over the priceless ball of roots.
